It was a good night for Lena Dunham and Matthew McConaughey on Sunday. Not only were both up for Golden Globes but their respective turns on HBO scored very nicely as well. Premiering for a third season, Dunham’sGirlshit a series high of 1.1 million viewers. That’s a 28% rise from the show’s Season 2 debut last year. The second episode of the cultural touchstone’s third cycle had 881,000 viewers at 10:30 PM. HBO announced last week at the TCA that Girls would be back for a fourth season next year. Before Girls at 10PM on Sunday there was the series premiere of True Detectives, with McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as two Louisiana state police officers on the trail of a murderer. The new series pulled in 2.3 million viewers in it debut airing for the best HBO premiere since Boardwalk Empire launched in 2010 with 4.8 million viewers. True Detectives beat both the 2011 Game Of Thrones opener’s 2.2 million and the now-heading for its third and final seasonThe Newsroom, which drew 2.1 million in its 2012 beginning.

The series premiere of HBO’s True Detective and the Season 3 premiere of Girls came amid the East Coast airing of Golden Globes telecast last night. That’s where both McConaughey and Dunham were up for awards with the former wining Best Actor – Drama for his turn in Dallas Buyers Club. So both were up against themselves, in a way – the best way.